Schools in Palm Beach County District have received at least 14 threats this school year alone, all of which are being actively investigated. There have been no arrests. Early in February, two different Palm beach County schools received two threats, one by phone and one by email.
The phoned threats do not come from ‘real’ numbers and the voices are not ‘real’ and are very hard to trace.
News Channel 5 asked Infostream’s Alan Crowetz about this and he said there are many apps and site which allow a person to hide their number and mask their voice. Some even allow account information to be faked too. He went to say that a lot of these apps are from small ‘shops’ that pop up and then disappear making it very difficult for police to trace the anonymous calls. Everything the police try requires and enormous amount of time and effort.
It’s equally difficult to trace the email threats. Alan says the criminals are using very obscure servers, very likely located overseas and with fake account information. It is extremely challenging. Technologically it is very challenging. There are a lot of hoops to jump through and barriers to leap, all of which takes police time. Police would need to be able to trace the email server and then hope they cooperate.
Alan says many of these apps and sites are notoriously unhelpful and uncooperative when it comes to law enforcement and it is often necessary to resort to legal action which is also time consuming and costly.
The District has also received low tech threats too literally in the form of writing on the walls.
